The Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) says it has developed software to improve transparency in revenue generation and distribution among the three tiers of government.
This was stated by the president of the RMAFC, Mohammed Shehu, during an interview with the Nigerian News Agency (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
Shehu said the software would help the commission perform one of its main functions of reviewing the revenue allocation formula for the entire federation from time to time.
“There is something called the vertical income allocation formula; who gets what percentage: federal, state or local government (LG). There is also the horizontal formula; How is that percentage shared between the states and the LGs?
“That means that you have to consider factors such as population, school enrollment, land area, hospital beds; These are some of the indices.
“Previously, what we did was request the required information manually, and then the commission would do the inspection manually,” Shehu said.
He said the commission also obtained data from relevant agencies such as the Office of the Statistician General of the Federation and the National Boundary Commission.
“So, now we have a software through which states and LGs will enter the required data in the system. They have a password.
“We will collect the data they sent; analyze it and also send our own team for verification, and then we will agree on what that horizontal formula will be like,” he said.
Shehu said that in terms of revenue generation, the commission was also trying to build a data bank through which it could monitor revenue generating agencies.
“The commission should be able to see in real time what is coming into their system.
“We have already moved from multiple accounts to a Single Treasury Account, but RMAFC also wants to have a system so that as income comes in, we are looking at it,” he said.
He called for the cooperation of all revenue generating agencies of the country in the commission’s effort to effectively ensure optimal deployment of government revenue.
“The federal government and subnational governments are concerned about how to generate more revenue while also blocking leakages.
“Technology will save us time reviewing documents and will help us reduce many leaks,” he said.